American Airlines left passenger on hold for 6 hours

By Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor
Benjamin SnyderManaging Editor

Benjamin Snyder is Fortune's managing editor, leading operations for the newsroom.

Prior to rejoining Fortune, he was a managing editor at Business Insider and has worked as an editor for Bloomberg, LinkedIn and CNBC, covering leadership stories, sports business, careers and business news. He started his career as a breaking news reporter at Fortune in 2014.

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The inaugural American Airlines non-stop flight to Shanghai, China, is towed from its gate during festivities at Los Angeles International Airport April 5, 2011 in Los Angeles, California.
Photo by Kevork Djansezian—Getty Images

American Airlines left a struggling customer on hold for six hours, a Tampa local news station reports.

Renee Allen from Florida expected to be flying from Garden City, Kansas to Tampa via Dallas, she told Tampa’s FOX 13. But that wasn’t to be when American Airlines cancelled the flight because of weather delays.

Allen called the customer service phone number she received and waited for a response—a response that didn’t come until six hours later. “They gave me a phone number to call, I tried to call several times, only to be told that the call volume was too much, and to call back another time. And then it would hang up on me,” she FOX 13.

Allen added:

I thought maybe 30 minutes, maybe an hour and two hours into it, I realized this is crazy but I’m not going to give up. This really was horrible customer service. I just could not believe that I could not get through.

The woman ultimately hung up the phone when she couldn’t wait any longer, according to Consumerist.

American Airlines apologized in a statement:

We apologize for the frustrating experience. It was a very challenging weekend due to extreme winter weather impacting the Dallas/Fort Worth area. American had more than 2,000 weather-related cancellations systemwide on Saturday and Sunday.